News in Brief

Date: 21 September 2025 - 22:00

News ID: ۱۴۳۷۵۹

PARIS (AFP) - Denmark summoned the U.S. chargé d’affaires for talks Wednesday after reports of attempted interference in Greenland, a Danish autonomous territory that US President Donald Trump wants to control. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly said that America needs the strategically located, resource-rich island for security reasons, and has refused to rule out the use of force to secure it. The vast majority of Greenland’s 57,000 people want to become independent from Denmark, but do not wish to become part of the United States, according to a January opinion poll.

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PARIS (Reuters) — Some of Europe’s biggest airports, including the region’s busiest Heathrow, raced on Sunday to restore normal operations to automatic check-in systems after disruption caused by hackers a day earlier. The hacking incident hit check-in and boarding systems provider Collins Aerospace, owned by RTX, disrupting operations on Saturday at London’s Heathrow, Berlin Airport and in Brussels, where passengers faced long queues, dozens of cancellations and delays.

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VIENNA (Dispatches) -- Austrian oil, gas and chemicals group OMV has fired an executive over allegations of spying for Russia and a Russian diplomat has been summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Vienna as a result of the affair, news magazine Profil reported.  Profil magazine said the OMV employee allegedly attracted attention through meetings with a Russian diplomat suspected by Western intelligence services of being an agent of Russia’s domestic intelligence service FSB.  The magazine said that Austria’s Directorate of State Security and Intelligence had been monitoring the OMV executive, who was not identified, for several months.

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KHARTOUM (Reuters) - South Sudan’s First Vice President Riek Machar has been charged with murder, treason and crimes against humanity for his alleged involvement in attacks by an ethnic militia against federal forces in March, the justice minister said. Hours after the minister’s announcement, President Salva Kiir suspended Machar from his post, a decree read on state radio said, without giving more details. The charges against Machar and his suspension escalate a feud between the country’s two main political camps - the other led by Kiir - which faced off in a 2013-2018 civil war in which an estimated 400,000 people died.

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LONDON (The Times) - For the first time in decades, the institutions fell out of the top-3 in the newspapers higher education guide. The UK’s two oldest and historically most prestigious universities, Oxford and Cambridge, have been knocked out of the top three rankings for the first time in decades. The London School of Economics took first place for the second consecutive year, with St Andrews in second and Durham University finishing third. Despite slipping in the overall rankings, Cambridge continued to dominate in individual subjects, topping 14 subject tables, it added. Oxford was named medical school of the year for 2026.